searching for
a world beyond
the glass where
ceilings melt
into blue sky.

refusing to
surrender on
the outside
looking in.

shadows speak
of sacrifice like
work has never
failed and

dreams are not
an endless staircase
into hell.

© Ben Ditmars 2014

Could you take this broken heart
this funeral beat, this withered soul
and take it back there to the start
to love again and make it whole.

Could you take these doleful eyes
of faded green, once emerald bright
and bring them up to meet with yours
to fill them with your loving light.

Could you love me in this moment
disregard my broken bones
shattered by another's longing
take my hand and lead me home.

If you could, not everlasting,
for a second, suspend time
would you press into my darkness
to place your healing hand in mine.

This I ask with humbled chorus
not for better, nor for worse,
the love you give it will not linger
let your blessing be my curse.

In Memory of Carl Sagan

his pale blue
sense of wonder
suspended
in a sunbeam

taught beauty in
the faint sensation
of our atoms
put together.

a legacy of
dust and stars
billions upon billions
of stars

I saw the sky and
endless possibility
stretch over me like
broken shackles
form the past

and we remain the
momentary masters
of a fraction
of a dot.

© Ben Ditmars 2014

music hollows
out an empty
heart and plays
its strings.

© Ben Ditmars 2014